


Fingernails The Size Of A Half-Grain Of Rice

by semi_sweet



Series: almost-happy families [3]
Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Disneyland, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kidfic, M/M, family fic, gay and happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 07:42:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13677282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_sweet/pseuds/semi_sweet
Summary: Kids' birthdays are always a load of fun, every year from the day they are born to the day they're too cool for them. Patrick doesn't like roller coasters.





	Fingernails The Size Of A Half-Grain Of Rice

**Author's Note:**

> I have exams so this is a rushed mess I am sorry, thanks to Platinumandpercocet for betaing

“It’s happening,” Pete had the biggest grin on his face when he put down the phone, “it’s actually happening, oh my god!” Before he even had the slightest chance to react, Patrick found himself being gradually squished to death by his husband’s tight embrace. “Oh my god, oh my god, okay, good, we… uh are we good to go? Do we… do we have diapers? And the cot, is the cot set up? Oh my god… what’re we doing with Robin? Can we… oh, your mum’s looking after him, right, okay, yes, we… I remember… I’ll…. Do you wanna call her or? No, no, I’ll do it, it’s…. I’ll call her….” 

 

Patrick, meanwhile, was frozen on the spot. As Pete buzzed and busied and panicked, he stood, stock still, staring at the yellow wall blankly.  _ It’s happening. _ Fuck. fuck, he wasn’t in any way prepared for this. He hadn’t been the first time, not in any way, obviously, you’re never prepared for your first kid, but this felt different. Last time, he’d been the one panicking, fussing and checking and double-checking absolutely everything, but now… he kinda felt like he’d been smacked across the head with a fucking trowel. 

 

“You coming?” Suddenly, big-brown eyes filled his vision, excited and panicky and hopeful and fucking terrified. Yup, Patrick felt that. All of it in one overwhelming wave of  _ oh fuck. We’re having another baby. _

  
  
  


  
“Papa, pleeeeeaaaase,” Lainy was dangling off his arm, tugging and pulling the way kids do when they want your attention and Patrick was doing his utmost to pretend she didn’t exist, the way parents do when they just can’t handle the fact that they have a tiny human they need to look after. “Pleeeease papa, it’s my birthday, pretty please can I, can I, can I?”

 

_ No you can not. _ Pete wasn’t much help, pushing their youngest along in a stroller with half an eye on Robin, although most of his energy was going into throwing Patrick amused looks. “Don’t ignore meeeeeee!” As her tiny voice reached a fever pitch, Patrick really didn’t have much choice, he grabbed her tiny wrist and crouched down in front of her, the scolding dad look on his face. “Stop it, okay? Stop throwing a tantrum or we’ll go right home!” He hated the puppy eyes that met him, they made him wanna go back on his word, they always did, but he had to be strong and consequential otherwise the would never l-

 

“Oh come on, Patrick, don’t be a spoilsport, it’s her birthday.” Pete. Fucking Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III. Patrick was going to fucking murder him one day. He shot him a glare over his shoulder, but Pete just shrugged. “She has a point!” 

  
  
  
  


“Calm down!” Patrick felt a hand gently lay itself on his knee, trying to still his jiggling leg.  _ Calm down _ . He wished he could calm down. He felt like he was gonna explode. The last surrogate hadn’t minded the two of them silently standing in the corner of the room, waiting to hear the tell-tale scream of an infant filling its lungs, but this time, they’d been told to stay outside so they sat on plastic chairs in the hospital corridor listening to agonized wails and curses. Fuck, Patrick was glad he wasn’t the one giving birth. 

 

And then, suddenly, it stopped. Patrick’s head snapped up and his hand found Pete’s and clung onto it tightly for comfort. 

There was silence from behind their door.

This wasn’t right.

There wasn’t supposed to be silence. 

He sought out Pete’s gaze, desperately needing the reassurance, but the worry was just as apparent in his husband’s face. Seconds went by, minutes without a noise save the sound of nervous talking and quiet footsteps. Seconds and minutes that dragged on for days and hours, seconds and minutes in which two heartbeats stopped.

 

Then came the scream. Patrick let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, the air rushing out of his lungs and into the space between them. Pete screwed his eyes shut at the overwhelming feeling, that first cry, the first breath, the first light seeping through unblinking eyelids. His fingers were still laced with his husband’s, Patrick’s cold wedding  band burning into Pete’s skin, reminding him of all that connected them. 

 

Pete took Patrick’s face in his hands and pressed a kiss to the tip of his nose, his breaths were still trembling. 

 

“Ready?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


There was little he could picture that could possibly be worse than being locked in a tiny, pseudo-submarine underwater with three tiny kids and an excitable would-be adult. Well, the queue to get onto said pseudo-submarine came pretty close if Patrick was being honest, but given the choice between standing in line until his legs sunk into his belly or being submerged in freezing water in a tiny capsule surrounded by idiots, he’d take the endless waiting, thank you very much.

 

Honestly, the worst thing about it wasn’t even the high-pitched squealing the three kids produced, even though Patrick was sure he would come away from this with permanent damage to his hearing, but his fucking  _ husband _ , an apparent  _ adult _ , who was yapping away like a Chihuahua on steroids in the seat behind him. Oh, Patrick would like to believe he was acting excited for their children’s sake but no, he knew better. After all, this was Pete Wentz they were talking about. 

 

“Hey, baby, smile!”

 

“What? Pete, what the-  _ ouch _ !” Ah yes, getting his over the head by a selfie stick. Honestly, Patrick sometimes wondered what his teenage self would think of him if he saw the way he lived now. 

 

“Dude, you cannot be serious.”

 

“CHEEEEESE!”

  
  
  
  
  


Her feet were so tiny. Of all the things that happened that day, all the things he’d felt, all the things he’d seen, that was what he’d remembered the most. Her tiny, little feet, all wrinkly like they didn’t fit into their skin, gently held in the hand of the person he loved the absolute most in this entire world. Pete would die for Patrick. He’d do it in an instant, without contemplating his options, without hesitating for one second. He’d take a bullet for that man. For him, for their little boy and now… now for their little girl.

 

Patrick was still just staring at her, like he couldn’t believe she was real, like it was all too much and, fuck, Pete knew that feeling. He was holding her in his arms, gently rocking her as she made the tiny noises infants make but not saying anything, not even doing much. 

 

It was moments like this that reminded Pete that intimacy was so much more than sex, it was sharing these moments, the one that would never leave him, of Patrick raw and vulnerable, overwhelmed and defenceless and so incredibly beautiful with the grey bags under his eyes and the messy bit of hair that was still clinging to his head. This was safe.

 

“I made this,” came the hushed whisper after Patrick had been staring at the bundle of blankets for what must have been 20 minutes. Pete smiled warmly and pressed a kiss to his temple. He remembered that feeling, the first time he’d held Robin. He’d made this beautiful, little thing. And if he could create something so perfect, then maybe he was worth something, after all. 

 

It was then the tears set in. A big, wet drop plopped onto the upper layer of blankets, leaving a dark mark. Patrick sniffed. 

 

“You okay, honey?” Pete wrapped an arm around his husband’s waist and pulled him as close as he dared when he was holding something fragile and precious.

 

“Yeah, I just… I… she looks like you!” he sniffled through his tears. Pete couldn’t help but chuckle quietly to himself as he pressed a kiss to Patrick’s shoulder. 

 

“I don’t think that’s genetically possible, baby.”

 

“Shut up, she’s your daughter.” 

 

“Yeah, she is,” he stroked through the mop of soft, blonde hair, “she is our daughter. Hello, baby girl. Welcome to the world.”

  
  
  
  
  


“Papa?” Patrick paused in the doorway of Lainy’s room and turned back round to look at her, all tucked up in her blue duvet with the fish on it. 

 

“Mh?” He little face scrunched up in thought, like she was trying to find the right words for the question she wanted to ask. Patrick knew that expression from somebody else, though that somebody else would tell him she couldn’t have inherited it, but maybe these things were learned. 

 

“Why do...I was born today, wasn’t I?” 

 

“Yeah, five years ago…” It had been… emotional, to say the least. 

 

“But how… I thought babies come from mommies? Why don’t I have a mommy?” That question. The one Patrick had dreaded from the moment they’d brought their first boy home almost seven years ago. Pete had explained it all to him, not that long ago, so Patrick had hoped there’d be some time to figure out what to say if either of the other two asked him yet, but apparently not. He paced back across the room and settled at the foot of her bed, big, brown eyes looking up at him expectantly.

 

“You know, people who have kids… most of the time, when they choose to, like… like with you, they… it’s because they love each other a lot.” A tiny frown crossed her features. “Most of the time… it’s a mommy and a daddy that love each other-”

 

“Like with Emma!” Patrick didn’t know which one Emma was, he had to confess, but really, anything that helped her understand was fine. 

 

“Uh, yeah. Emma. So, most of the time that’s what happens, but I… we… you have two daddies who love each other very much instead. Which is… a little different but just as good, I promise.” He waited nervously as she made sense of it all in her little head. Kids’ minds truly were something else. 

 

“Then… which of you is my mommy?”

 

“None of us, we’re your daddy and your papa.”

  
“But then… but then how was I born? You’re being silly, papa!” How did one explain IVF and surrogacy to a five-year-old? Why didn’t they ever prepare you for this kind of stuff? Was he supposed to figure out how to teach a tiny child this without permanently traumatizing her?

 

“We, uh… we sort of borrowed a very, very nice lady who said she’d help us have you. It’s a little complicated and very science-y, I don’t really… I don’t really understand it properly myself, but she basically… she had you and then gave you to us. Because we wanted you.” There was so much he was doing wrong, so many things he couldn’t explain, so many things he didn’t understand. He was prepared for so many more questions, the “didn’t mommy want me?”, the “Which one of you is my  _ real _ daddy?”, questions he didn’t know how to answer. Pete was so much better at this kind of thing than him, Pete always seemed to have the right words for everything when Patrick was often at a loss for them.

 

But no more questions came.

 

“I’m tired, papa.”A not all that small amount of relief washed over Patrick when he pushed himself off the bed and leaned over his daughter to tuck her in again and press a sweet little kiss to her forehead. 

  
“Sleep tight, darling. I love you very much.”

 

He switched off the light on his way out.

  
  
  
  
  


Pete came wobbling downstairs from putting the boys to bed a few minutes after Patrick had spread out on the couch with a bowl of Doritos and the remote. 

 

“The program is shit”, he informed his husband as he zapped through, “literally only bad romcoms and… is that… is that Fifty Shades?” It was Pete’s chuckle that led him to suspect there was something he was missing. “Okay, what have I forgotten?”

 

Suddenly, he had a lap full of Pete. Suddenly, there were rough hands on his face, caressing his cheeks. Suddenly, his lips were involved in a kiss that was so much deeper than the routine pecks he’d grown used to. He almost automatically let his hands rest on the backs of Pete’s thighs that straddled his own in the way they always had in the back of a dumpy little van 20 years ago. God. 20 years. Had it been that long? Were they that old? 

 

Pete’s voice was low and breathy when he muttered against Patrick’s lips. “Happy Valentine’s, baby,” before going back in for some more kissing and before he knew it, they were making out like a pair of horny teenagers. 

 

“Mmmh, I always forget… with Lainy…”

 

“I know, baby, I know, it’s fine.” Pete all but subtly rubbed his crotch up against Patrick’s, demanding, the way he always used to back when he sported eyeliner and a black fringe and would wind his fingers in long, blonde hair and Patrick would whine and be so pathetically turned on, wanting nothing more than to devour this fucking beautiful human that had seemingly been placed on earth just for him…

 

15 years ago. The Patrick from 15 years ago would have moaned his little moans and clawed at Pete’s clothing, trying to get it off, get him naked, get him to sink down on his cock and ride him into oblivion because that was what Pete fucking Wentz did best and the Pete from 15 years ago would have complied, kissing and sucking his way along Patrick’s pale body because it was beautiful and he was beautiful and when it came to him, Pete knew no limits, no time, no place, anywhere and anywhen would do as long at it was  _ Patrick _ .

 

But now, 15 years later, on their nice couch in their nice living room of their nice house, with their three kids sleeping upstairs and the rings on their fingers leaving cold marks across each other’s skin, Patrick leaned back enough to be able to look at his beautiful husband, hair greyer than it once had been, face mapped out by faint lines, and muttered:

 

“Can we skip the sex and go straight to cuddling?”

 

And Pete, not as undamaged as he once had been, not as much stamina as he had once had, dropped his forehead against the shoulder of Patrick’s ugly, grey sweater and sighed a sigh of relief.

 

“Oh God, yeah, thank fuck, I’m absolutely exhausted.”

 

“Me too… so you’re not gonna be disappointed if we don’t-”

 

“What? No, I’m, dude, I don’t know if I can get it up right now. I’m so tired.”

 

“Good. Good, then we can just…”

 

“Yeah, let’s just…” Pete shuffled around until his head was lying in Patrick’s lap and pale fingers could rake through hair brittle from years of heat-damage as Renée Zellweger did her worst to pursue Colin Firth in ugly Christmas sweaters and honestly? 

 

He’d take it over heated nights in the back of dark buses any day.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are appreciated, my tumblr is scmi-sweet


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